topic Mean Center tool in Geoprocessing Questions

Mean Center tool

TimBaird — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:04:57 GMT

I'm having difficulty using the mean center spatial statistics tool to calculate a weighted center of production among a set of counties. After entering input, output, and weight field and running, the dialogue doesn't display any errors and says the process is completed, but no output file shows up.

Executing: MeanCenter "MN production" "C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Desktop\GIS\Counties\MN center of production.shp" total # #
Start Time: Fri Aug 27 11:02:58 2010
Running script MeanCenter...
Executed (MeanCenter) successfully.
End Time: Fri Aug 27 11:02:58 2010 (Elapsed Time: 0.00 seconds)

Does this indicate that I need one of the optional fields, or something else?

Thanks!

Re: Mean Center tool

DanPatterson_Retired — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:52:01 GMT

version of ArcMap?
In 10, Geoprocessing menu, Geoprocessing Options, is the Add Results of geoprocessing operations to the display checked on or off? Have you physically navigated to the output folder to see if there is any output? Other possibilities of none of those apply...do all records contain valid numeric values?

Re: Mean Center tool

TimBaird — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:36:33 GMT

version of ArcMap?

9.3 build 1770

Have you physically navigated to the output folder to see if there is any output?

Yes--nothing's there.

Other possibilities of none of those apply...do all records contain valid numeric values?

I believe so--plenty have a value of 0, but to the best of my knowledge this doesn't reflect a missing data point but the actual value.

Re: Mean Center tool

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:50:54 GMT

From the ver 10 help files (check 9.3 for equivalent)

When using shapefiles, keep in mind that they cannot store null values. Tools or other procedures that create shapefiles from non-shapefile inputs may store or interpret null values as zero. This can lead to unexpected results. See also Geoprocessing considerations for shapefile output.

Try querying for values > 0 and run the tool on the selection.
Works for me, see attached

Re: Mean Center tool

TimBaird — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:35:52 GMT

Thanks for the tip, Dan, but no luck on my end. The problem doesn't appear to just be my data/shapefiles--I downloaded Joseph Kerski's 'Population Drift' tutorial, which goes over the mean center tool, and following his instructions using his shapefiles gave me the same lack of results.

Re: Mean Center tool

DanPatterson_Retired — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:48:52 GMT

could you zip the shapefile and email it to me at Dan_Patterson AT carleton.ca ....you know what to do with the AT of course...I will have a look at on this end to ensure that it is not a file problem and to check to see if it is a setup issue. I can email the results (if any) back so you don't get held up waiting for a solution

Re: Mean Center tool

LaurenRosenshein — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:27:47 GMT

Hi Tim,

I cannot be sure about the problem with your data, but I do know that Joseph Kerski's Population Drift tutorial recently helped us find a bug. The problem with that data is that all of the counties for one of the states (Alaska I believe) has -999 for population for at least one year. When all of the features in one of the cases have all negative values (in this case the State Name was the case field), the tool fails to execute. The fix for this bug should be in 10 SP2. To get around the issue, you can remove the states where all counties have -999 values, or change the values to 0. We are very sorry for any inconvenience!

That being said, it doesn't sound like the "all negatives in a case" issue is what was giving you trouble with your original data. If you are still having trouble with this, and you don't mind sharing your data, I'd be happy to try to troubleshoot the issue. You can send me the data at lrosenshein@esri.com.

Lauren Rosenshein
Geoprocessing Product Engineer